Blogs

   Do you believe in Christmas miracles? A creative agency from UK called Grey London definitely does. Their remarkable story tells how a seemingly crazy idea can literally save human lives, proving that funny festive trinkets can have much more power and meaning to them than it might seem from the first glance.

   Of Beards and Christmas...

   If you have ever dreamt of having a Christmas tree right on your face, you will be happy to know that it is no longer a problem with Beard Baubles, a charity project initiated by Grey London and inspired by the magical spirit of Christmas and desire to raise awareness to the deadly illness known as malignant melanoma - the skin cancer.

   It all started as a mere experiment in December 2014, when Grey London and Beard Season, a charity organization from Australia, cooperatively launched an extraordinary product called Beard Baubles - a set of festive Christmas ornaments attached to the facial hair. The accessory became a true hit among the men who prefer to have a considerable amount of growth on their faces. In fact, the Beard Baubles became so popular that they were completely sold out in a very short period of time.

   The photos of bearded men with Christmas baubles soon flooded the internet and gave the trend an extra spin! Now Beard Baubles are among the most fashionable and fancy Christmas accessories for men and… well, hairy dogs, as reported by Ollie Dearn, who works at the Grey London agency - as it turned out, the trend enthralled not only humans but their pets too.

   Can beards really save people?

   But how do Beard Baubles save lives, you would ask. All the money from the sales of the baubles is donated to the skin cancer research. The creators of Beard Baubles believe that malignant melanoma will be combated sooner if more awareness is raised concerning this problem. Needless to say, donations are very important for fighting skin cancer, but the most important is letting more people in the world know how dangerous the disease is. That’s exactly what Beard Baubles do.

   The founder of Beard Season, Scott Maggs, makes the point: “The real goal of the #BeardBaubles isn’t raising funds, it’s inspiring action, and every day now, hundreds of people are signing up as Beard Season Ambassadors on our website, following us on social media, booking skin checks, and spreading the word”.

   Impressed? Taking the next step is easy

   Ning is always inspired by the stories like that. We know our network creators are compassionate and charitable people, who would be happy to contribute to the right cause - that’s the reason why there are so many altruistically oriented websites on Ning.

   To facilitate network creators in helping others, Ning has introduced a new Donations feature that allows users to raise funds for the purposes they consider important.

   You can now set up a “Donate” button on any page of your Ning network, provide a description of your fundraiser, explain its importance, and express gratitude to those who agree to donate. You can easily check the results of your charity campaign by monitoring the transaction statistics.

   So now you can come up with the idea as crazy and ambitious as the Beard Baubles in order to collect money for charity, organizations researching terminal illnesses or helping the children who lost their parents, etc.

Make the world a better place together with Ning!

One of the great things about living and working in Silicon Valley is that from time to time we get to meet people who are working on a truly cutting-edge product that has the potential to transform, well, just about everything. We ran into one of these products recently. It’s called the Kno. You may not have heard of it, but you will soon. The folks who make this hard-to-get Kno tablet have been kind enough to provide us with two of them, which we want to give away to two people here on Creators! Read on for all the details, and check out the Kno. — Jason Rosenthal, CEO, Ning

Next Monday is the second annual celebration of Community Manager Appreciation Day all across the Internet.

Last year, I pasted Internet High-Fives into conversations and profiles of community manager types I know as a way to recognize all their hard work. It was great fun. This year, I’m proud to say that we can do better.

The fine folks who make the Kno tablet computer have graciously donated two of their upcoming tablet computers to our cause: recognizing people who devote their time to encouraging online conversation and activity — just like you do every day on your Ning Network. As the head of your own social network, you are essentially the community manager of your own site. This is your chance to share your expertise — and get a shot at winning a tablet computer.

You’ve undoubtedly had a ton of experience growing and shaping the conversation on your Ning Network. As your entry in this contest to win a Kno tablet, tell us...

What’s the single best piece of advice you can give to a new community manager?

How this contest works

• You can submit an entry by simply replying to this discussion with a piece of good advice for a new community manager. One sentence works. A few more if necessary. 
• Witty, insightful, funny, serious, straightforward? It's up to you. Whatever you think is compelling.
• One entry = one reply: Please only one reply per person. Multiple entries will be disqualified.
• Enter early but not often. No do-overs!
• Network Creators only, please. Admins are not eligible.
• This contest begins now and will end at midnight (PST) Monday, January 24th.
• On January 25th, we’ll close this discussion, gather the responses, and force our CEO to choose only the two best pieces of advice.
• We’ll announce the winner here on Creators on or around January 28.
• We’ll also update this discussion with the results, so you’ll be automatically notified since you’re following this discussion.
• We’ll contact the winners before announcing the results, so rest assured that if you win, we’ll track you down!

Good luck! Our hope is that everyone will get a good nugget of advice out of this community-based contest. 

Hey all! I wanted to share a special offer for interested Ning Pro NCs. We've worked closely with Mobile Roadie (one of our Ning Everywhere partners) to provide a significant holiday discount on their mobile app creation services.

If you're interested in creating a native iPhone, Android or BlackBerry application that can integrate with your Ning Network, you'll be able to save 20% on setup fees through December 31st.

Check out this offer page for more details and some product tour videos. Happy holidays!

In the past month, the nation has come face-to-face with an alarming epidemic among its youth: bullying, cyber bullying and teen suicide. As a platform that enables any person or organization to create a social website, we intrinsically understand the power of the social Web. It lets people gather around and connect directly with the organizations, artists, politicians, non-profit and brands that matter most to them. Anyone can instantly share, engage in a conversation, and connect with other people who share similar interests—to be social online. But just like in real life, bullying can happen online too.

Ning is the platform that enables people to freely and safely share their ideas and thoughts. As an employee who’s constantly in touch with members of our platform, I want to highlight the handy tools we have to empower Ning Creators to prevent aggressive, hateful behavior within their social communities:


• Ning Safety Center and Network Creator Safety and Policy Resources – Here you can learn all things related to creating a safe and secure online community
• Teen Safety Tips - Tips on protecting privacy and staying safe for teens
• “Report an Issue” link - It’s at the bottom of every page and allows your members to report objectionable content to you

If there's anything that should be reported to Ning, don't hesitate to contact us. If someone you know is a victim and in need of help, you can reach out to one of the following national suicide prevention lines:


• Trevor Lifeline - 1-866-4-U-TREVOR (1-866-488-7386)
• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline - 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255)


To anyone out there feeling alone or different, you’re not alone. There are many communities on the Ning Platform where you can also find support:


• No Dumb Questions
• OUTtv Socialize
• The Bully Suicide Project
• Swirl Radio
• Orange County Equality Coalition
• National Marriage Boycott
• QueerToday.com
• Cafe Q – Sacramento
• The Something Awesome Project

Reposted from The Ning Blog.

Want to build your own iPhone App but are hesitant about how it all works?

The CEO at AppMakr, who we recently partnered with us to help NCs quickly and easily build their own iPhone app, is giving the first 25 Pro Network Creators who built an AppMakr app for their Ning Network 3 months free. All you have to do is sign up here, and they'll help you get set up.

What's the catch? Once you're done, we'd simply like to here how it went here on Creators.

To summarize:

1. Sign up with AppMakr and build your Ning iPhone App.
2. Fill out this form.
3. Share your experience here on Creators with a Blog post.

That's it. This is a great way for you to get started and try it out.

Good luck building your app, and if you're chosen — we want to hear how it went!

Ning Pro accounts have the ability to offer a fully branded Music Player, but if your Ning Network isn’t all about music, there are a number of lightweight options that may work for you that are worth checking out. I did a little research and tried out a few services myself in the hope that I could find a few decent alternatives for Creators who like having music but don’t need a full-fledged player.

A few things to keep in mind…

Nullum Gratuitum Prandium *

There’s an undeniable truth about online services that offer music and/or embeddable widgets: It’s not cheap to host millions of songs. As a consequence, there are few completely free services that have survived with this business model (a great case in point is imeem, which shut down last year). But, there are still a few out there.

White label generally isn’t free

Some of these services include advertising or branding from the company that makes the player. Some of them offer limited functionality for free — and more options for a price. For most of these, the cost is reasonable. If branding is of utmost importance to you, check the FAQ pages for each service to confirm their policies about logos and branding.

Size matters

Some of the players will auto-resize, but some aren’t easily scalable in their dimensions, so you should experiment and make sure one really fits into one of the columns of your Ning Network.

Sign-up to play

All of these services will require you to create an account in their system. It’s usually quite easy, although at least one requires a connection to your Facebook account. Most include ads or links back to their home page. If you’re uncomfortable with that, you may want to consider a Ning Pro account, which allows you to offer an unbranded, fully hosted Music Player that offers complete control.

Check your tech

Some of these players use Javascript, some use Flash, and some use both. As such, they could interfere with other code that you’ve added to your Ning Network (or perhaps could conflict in specific situations). Chances are they won’t, but (as always) test it out and see what you think before totally committing to something new. That said: There’s no harm in trying out as many as you can.

We have always prided ourselves on our uptime record. In March, we had 99.999% uptime. However, Ning Networks experienced slowness last week and brief downtime on Thursday evening. I wanted to take a few moments to walk you through what happened last week and what we’re working on to improve on situations like this going forward.

Starting Tuesday morning we saw sporadic instability in our servers, resulting in slowness that many of you experienced. Our operations and engineering teams investigated a variety of potential causes for the instability including a back-end release that was pushed out on Monday. We rolled the release back as part of our investigation and continued to look for the root cause.

On Thursday morning we believe we identified and addressed the primary cause of the instability: we had started testing a prototype to deliver real-time information to Ning Networks on Monday. We stopped the test and continued to monitor the platform. At around 8pm that day a cluster of cache servers that had become slightly unstable during the investigation started failing. At this point, we began an unplanned maintenance to restart them and it took about 70 minutes to complete the restarts and go live.

Whenever there’s an issue on the Ning Platform, we pursue the following protocol: First, our on-call engineers begin investigating what might be causing the issue. Then, for larger issues like this week, we escalate it to all-hands on deck. We also strive to get information out to you as fast as possible through several channels including the Ning Status Blog, Creators Ning Network and Ning Status Twitter account. Longer-term, we are working on an NC landing page with an announcement bar for important messages and a separate, lightweight “Report an Issue” link, which will allow NCs to quickly and simply report an issue they may be experiencing.

Following this incident, I wanted to highlight two specific areas we have identified for improvement:
1 It took longer than we’d like to identify and fix the problem: To address this, we are continuing our work on a series of projects that will simplify the platform and improve our ability to identify problems quickly when they happen. I will share more details with you early next week.
2 -We were not as effective as we could have been in communicating both the state of the platform and what we were working on: To address this, we are reviewing our internal and external communication processes to ensure that we can give you the most accurate and timely information on what is happening.

Keeping your Ning Network online and speedy is our top priority. Thanks again for all of your patience. As always we appreciate your feedback, so please let us know if you experience any problems on your Ning Network or have ideas for how we can improve the service.

I can't really say it better: "National High Five Day falls on the third Thursday of April
each year, which falls this year on April 15, 2010. "

That's right! Tomorrow is the Day to Celebrate high fives, by indeed, giving out high fives as much as possible. We're going to be offering virtual high fives here on Creators, to all of you who contribute positively to the conversations here.

Have you thought about celebrating this on your Ning Network? To help, here are a few high five graphics:

Check out more content (including videos!) at the National High Five Day website.

Can content enhance your Ning Network?

Yesterday we interviewed Box.net Platform Manager Jeremy Glassenberg about the Box.net Ning App, and how Ning Networks can use it to help manage and share content. Today, the friendly people at Box.net are giving away one year of Box.net Business service for 20 seats — a $2,400 value!

Entering is super simple. All you need to do is comment on this blog post, and let us know how your Ning Network would benefit from Box.net’s Cloud Content Management capabilities. Please include both your Ning Network’s address (http://) and how you would use Box.net in your comment on the blog post. One winner will be chosen by overall best use case. Hurry! We’re accepting entries up until Tuesday, April 20 at 5 p.m PST.

Important! Maintenance on Friday

Important notice for all Network Creators: All Ning Networks will be down for scheduled maintenance this Friday (tomorrow), April 9th from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. PST. Since this is planned downtime, your Ning Network will display a branded message (with *your* Ning Network’s name) to any visitors. If you have any questions, please let us know here.

10,000 Creators Strong Contest Winner(s)

It’s official. We’ve now reached our 10,000th member and awarded our contest prizes: John and Jennifer, FTW! Thanks to everyone for helping us celebrate this milestone.

Want to Connect Your Ning Network to LinkedIn?

Someone asked for a clever way to connect their Ning Network to LinkedIn, and a Creator had a really nifty idea about how to use a simple RSS feed to connect the two. Great answer, Steve!

Made by Awesome Creators

Jen: Check Credentials of Potential New Friends Before Accepting Friend Requests

Joseph Porcelli: Teaching Members Which Features to Use When! and How to Export Your Members to a CSV File

Amit S: Running a Ning Network Isn't a Child's Play!!

Across the Internet

Fundraising from Online Communities: Love this quote: “If you want to fundraise from online communities, don’t start by asking for money.”

Is your Ning Network F-U-N? Don’t Build a Boring Online Community

This is (in theory) written for PR folks, but a few of these tips could be invaluable for Network Creators (check out BackTweets and Wordle for usefulness and fun, respectively).

Excuse me, sir. Are forums going to be replaced by something shiny and new? Forums Are Everywhere and Here to Stay, So Skip the Tools Discussion and Focus on Your Objectives

If you joined Creators recently, you may have known about our contest to reward our 10,000th member with a Timbuk2 Ning bag and 10,000 gift credits. We’re happy to report that we have a winner! Well, actually, two.

Please join us in raising the roof, hoisting a glass, and high-fiving Creator John Freeman! He’s located in the U.K., and his Ning Network, Down the Tubes, is all about British comics. Congratulations, John! You are our 10,000th member!

We always ask folks to let us know how they heard about Creators, and some people regularly tell us that they heard about us from an existing member of Creators. We wanted to reward one of those people who get mentioned a lot, so we tallied up the person with the most recommendations and came up with a second winner: Jennifer James. It makes sense for us to see so many people listing Jennifer as how they heard about Creators; she runs a number of very successful Ning Networks, including the Mom Bloggers Club.

Thanks for joining us, Jennifer and John. You'll both be receiving a Timbuk2 Ning bag like this one in the mail, and you should soon see 10,000 gift credits attached to your account. Go crazy with the gifts!

We also wanted to say thanks to everyone else who’s been following along as we grow. The Creators Network as you see it now has only been alive for five months, and we’re thrilled at how much we’ve grown. What makes it especially wonderful for those of us who work at Ning is how we can take the combined wisdom of our members and apply that directly to how we build Creators. Like many of you, we’re building up a Ning Network from scratch; having so many smart people around to offer suggestions and feedback moves us along and inspires us to keep building new things.

Thanks again, everyone! We’ll do some more contests soon. Feel free to suggest an idea for one, too. Always open to suggestions.

10,000 Creators Mark Reached

We reached our 10,000th member! We’ll be announcing the winners (there’s two!), but it looks like that might be early next week. We’ve contacted them and are awaiting their responses. Thanks to everyone who entered — which is everyone. We’ll definitely be doing more contests in the future. We’d like to also spotlight contests NCs have run in the past that were successful. Everyone can benefit from that kind of shared knowledge.

April Fools!

Jen, one of our superstar Creators members, totally tricked us with an April Fool’s joke. Most April Fool’s jokes don’t work on us, but this one did. Apparently, it worked on a lot of people. Nice one, Jen!

DIY: The “Hero” Box

Lots of Creators have been asking about the new carousel of rotating images at the top of the Creators Main Page. Here’s a tutorial that shows how to make something similar.

Made by Awesome Creators

JP: 5 Free Matching Ning Backgrounds and Ning Headers

Joseph Porcelli: How to Export Your Members to a CSV File

Jen: Add Google Ads in Header

Peter Moorman: Top 5 Reasons Ning Members Leave and How You Can Get Them to Stay

Across the Internet

Developing Online Community Guidelines: This is some great advice for anyone who ever plans on revising their Ning Network guidelines. It includes a comprehensive list of all the things you *could* restrict — but with reasons why you shouldn’t.

Ever wanted to go beyond the virtual and actually meet the people in your Ning Network? Here’s 8 Ways To Merge Your Online Community With The Real World

The One Thing About Building a Community asks the question: If I had to start over from scratch and build a new online community, what would I do different? Good quote: “Community is not something that happens when you need it, it's something that you build over time that is suddenly there for you, when you need it.”

From the shouting-fire-in-a-crowded-theater department: Does Free Speech Apply to Communities? Favorite quote: “Those accusing you of censorship are a bit like those friends of friends who appear in your house, smoke in the kitchen, turn the music up a little bit too loud and suggest you should chill out when you challenge them.”

Community Resource: We discovered some new online resources; especially good for larger Ning Networks.

Can you answer this question: “People will participate in my community because…” If not, read on: Why Will People Participate In Your Online Community

Welcome to the fourth in a series of Ning Creators blog posts focusing on simple design tricks you can use on your network.

Trick #4: Adding a Two-Column Hero Box

The following code, used on the homepage of Ning Creators, will insert a "hero" module that spans two columns at the top of your network's Main page content area. This area could be used to insert an image, a custom Flash/JavaScript piece or just a simple text introduction.

Last week, I returned from five days at South by Southwest Interactive – an annual conference that focuses on technology and social media. The most interesting panels and talks that I attended while at SXSW focused on the ways that new social media technologies - like Ning! - are shaping the newest generation of non-profits.

Kiva, a non-profit that is arguably the most well known microfinance organization today, has engineered a fantastic online social network for their organization. The engineering team at Kiva has built a robust social network that allows lenders to connect with entrepreneurs in the developing world, which includes photos, descriptions, and updates on the portion of the loans that the entrepreneurs have been able to pay back. DonorsChoose is another non-profit that's been helping support teachers for the past decade. They're using a social network to allow donors to choose which projects they want to contribute to, and they've done a fantastic job of building a website that's truly interactive. When someone adds a donation on their website, they encourage them to write a note explaining why they decided to give money. It's a great example of using a social network to create an authentic and personable experience for donors.

While these organizations may be building their own websites with the help of a team of engineers, many of the strategies that are working for them can be applied to non-profits using Ning to provide the framework for a non-profit network. I can't think of a better place than the Ning Creators Network to share the lessons I learned!


Be transparent.
People like to know where their money is going. The more that you can do to explain what happens to the money after you’ve deposited a check (or accepted a donation through Paypal), the better your donors will feel about giving you money. Use the Pages feature to create a help center on your Ning Network, and let people ask you questions directly using your Discussion Forum. You can use the Blogs feature to update your Ning Network with the latest news from the organization. Ask your employees to create profile pages, so that donors can see the faces behind all your hard work.

Let them spread the word.
You don’t need to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to telling people about your organization. Let the people who are already supporting you be your advocate. If people believe in your non-profit, they'll want to tell their friends. Encourage the members of your Ning Network to invite their friends to join, and you can focus your energy on creating the best possible way for them to learn about your cause. That said, it never hurts to show people what your focus is. Greet new members who join your Ning Network, and reward members who invite their friends with Award gifts.

Use your Ning Network to build a relationship with your donors.
Once someone has joined your Ning Network, it's much easier to keep them involved. Send out broadcast messages to announce new initiatives, and update your Blog to let your members know what's going on. Ask your members for feedback using a Forum discussion, and find out what you can be doing better. Here on Ning Creators, we get loads of ideas about how to make Ning better and what we can do to get our Network Creators to love us. This can work just as well for your non-profit!

Connect with Twitter and Facebook.
Chances are you already have a Facebook fan page and/or a Twitter account to keep donors involved. It can be daunting to manage all of these social media outlets, so let your Ning Network help you with this! Connect your Ning Network to Twitter and Facebook, and you can push your status updates to all three places with a single click.

Thank people in public.
Show the people who have contributed how much you appreciate them by thanking them on your Ning Network. Use profile comments or customized gifts to say thank you, or use the Pages feature to post a donors directory. Just had a volunteer event? Post photos on your Ning Network to show off how well it went!


The best part of my job is seeing the way Network Creators like you are using Ning in creative ways. If you have more suggestions for using a Ning Network to help grow your non-profit, let us know here!